The Student Council revamped its buddy program with a meeting this Wednesday in the LGI during lunch. This was the first meeting since the program expanded to include sophomores who are seeking mentorship and juniors wishing to instill advice.

The buddy program, originally only offered to freshmen and seniors, started during the 2021 fall semester to provide underclassmen with mentorship and advice about high school by pairing them with an upperclassmen based on similar interests, such as clubs and extracurricular activities. The most recent meeting hosted 30 buddy pairs.

Student Council president and senior Rachel Pontes said she recruits by emphasizing the many benefits for both parties of the buddy pairs.

“If you’re an underclassman, you get to learn about classes to take, prerequisites, college application advice from people who’ve really seen it all, SAT advice, big clubs to join, and kind of get the lowdown from people with experience at Bellaire and about life in high school,” Pontes said. “If you’re an upperclassman, you get NHS hours, you can recruit people for your clubs and eat free cookies.”

Students wishing to participate in the program can sign-up through Student Council’s Google form, where they report their favorite classes, activities and extracurriculars they’re interested in. Once underclassmen sign in at the meeting, they are matched with their respective buddies and sit down at tables to begin discussion.

“We try to match people who we think will get along or will want advice for that specific activity or purpose,” Pontes said.

Pontes said that the Student Council launched the program to remedy the disconnect to the reality of high school experienced by many underclassmen after online learning for nearly two years.

“I think a lot of freshmen and even sophomores were coming into a very strange environment, because the last time they had been in school in-person was maybe 7th or 8th grade, so this is a way for them to get advice,” Pontes said. “We really wanted to connect the student body, and what better way to do that than having kids meet up in-person.”

The face-to-face interactions at the buddy meetings provide underclassmen like freshman Amy Liu with a welcoming social environment to help guide them on their journey through high school.

“I joined the buddy program to get to know more about high school and colleges,” Liu said. “My favorite part about it is getting to meet some seniors and be social because I’m not that social otherwise.”

A typical buddy meeting agenda consists of buddy introductions and icebreakers followed by “question drops,” where lists of 5-7 discussion questions are dropped in the buddy program Remind group for easy access to all pairs. Questions are dropped every five minutes to keep buddy conversations flowing and engaged. At the end of the meeting, buddies exchange contact information to stay in touch and ask follow-up questions.

“I joined the buddy program because my freshman year I did Cardinal Camp and I loved my Cardinal Crew leader,” senior and mentor Isabelle Ajdiou said. “He was a very big mentor for me and I really liked having a relationship with an upperclassman that could give me advice so I wanted to do the same for another freshman.”

Despite many eager upperclassmen signing up to offer advice, Pontes said that the buddy program lacks enough underclassmen to match all the pairs.

“Reaching freshmen was pretty hard because coming from a standpoint where we’re all upperclassmen, we don’t know many underclassmen,” Pontes said. “We went to English classes and tried to present, and we did some social media posts.”

Pontes said she has big goals for the program and hopes to see it expand for its next meeting on April 12.

“I hope that the buddies stay in touch and I hope that they go away from these meetings knowing a little more about high school or Bellaire and having someone they can contact if they need help,” Pontes said. “I remember last time we finished the buddy program and a couple weeks later I found out that some buddies had gone to play spikeball with some of their upperclassmen buddies. That’s the kind of connection we’re looking for.”